# Date: August 1915

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF A DRAFT RESOLUTION

169

task] The duty of socialists — without renouncing a single means 
of legal struggle of the working class, to subordinate all of them to this 
essential and primary task, to develop revolutionary consciousness 
among the workers, to unite them in an international revolutionary 
struggle, to support and advance every revolutionary uprising, to strive 
for the transformation of the imperialist war [of peoples] between peoples* 
into civil war of the oppressed 
classes against 
their oppressors,** 
a war for the expropriation 
of the capitalist class, for the conquest of political power by the pro
letariat, for the realization of socialism.

20034

GERM[AN] TRANSL[ATION] OF A DRAFT RESOL[UTION] (OF THE C.C.). *
[August 1915]

The present war is born of imperialism. 
Capitalism has already reached this its highest stage, in which the 
productive forces of society and the magnitude of capital have grown 
beyond the bounds of individual nation-states. 
Hence the striving of the 
great powers to enslave foreign nations, to plunder colonies as sources 
of raw materials and fields for capital investment. The entire world is 
becoming a unified world economic organism. [The entire world is divided 
among a handful of great powers. The objective preconditions for so
cialism have become completely mature. The present war is a capitalist 
war over privileges and monopolies, which are supposed to postpone the 
collapse of capitalism.

Since socialists strive for the liberation of labor from the yoke of 
capital and stand on the point of view of the fraternization of workers 
of all nations, they struggle against every oppression of nations and 
against all national privileges. In the epoch when the [bourgeoisie] was 
still progressive, when on the historical agenda stood the overthrow of 
absolutism, feudalism and foreign domination, socialists recognized — and 
only in this sense — the defense of the fatherland, since they have always 
been the most consistent and resolute democrats. Even now, if in Eastern 
Europe or

* The words: "between peoples" are omitted in the German text. Ed.
** The words: "oppressed classes" are omitted in the German text. Ed.
The title is written by Lenin. Ed.

in the colonies a war of oppressed nations against their oppressors — 
the great powers — were to break out, then socialists would completely 
sympathize with these exploited nations.

The present war, however, is born of a completely different historical 
epoch, when the bourgeoisie has long since ceased to be progressive and 
has become directly reactionary. On the part of both groups of the war
ring powers, this war is a war of slaveholders for the preservation and 
strengthening of slavery: that is, for a new partition of colonies, for 
the "right" to oppress other nations, for the privileges of great-power 
capital, for the perpetuation of wage slavery through the division of 
workers of different countries and the oppression of workers by the most 
reactionary means. Therefore, the phrases about the defense of the father
land on the part of both groups of warring powers are merely a deception 
of the people by the bourgeoisie. Neither the victory of one of the two 
coalitions nor the return to the status quo can prevent either the freedom 
of the majority of nations from imperialist oppression by a handful of 
great powers, nor guarantee the working class even its present modest 
cultural conquests. The epoch of relatively peaceful capitalism is gone 
forever. Imperialism brings the working class an unprecedented sharpening 
of class struggle, of need, of unemployment, of price increases, of the 
pressure of trusts, of militarism, political reaction, which is becoming 
sharper even in the freest countries.

The real meaning of the slogan of defense of the fatherland is the 
advocacy of the "right" of "one's own" national bourgeoisie to oppress 
foreign nations, is national-liberal workers' politics, is an alliance of 
a tiny part of privileged workers with "their" national bourgeoisie 
against the mass of the proletariat. The socialists who pursue such a 
policy are in fact chauvinists, social-chauvinists. The policy of voting 
credits, of entry into ministries, of civil peace, etc., is a betrayal of 
socialism. Opportunism, produced by the conditions of the entire past 
"peaceful"* epoch, has now matured into a complete break with socialism, 
into a direct enemy of the emancipation struggle of the proletariat.

The word "peaceful" was inserted later by Lenin. Ed.
Up to this point written in the hand of G. Zinoviev. The entire con
clusion of the translation is written by Lenin. Ed.

GERMAN TRANSLATION OF A DRAFT RESOLUTION
171

The working class cannot achieve its world-historical goals without 
a ruthless struggle both against open opportunism and social-patriotism* 
(the majority of the soc[ial]-dem[ocratic] parties of France, Germany, 
Austria, Hyndman, Fabians and trade unionists in England, Rubanowitsch, 
Plekhanov and "Nasha Zarya" in Russia, etc.), and against the so-called 
"Center," which has surrendered Marxism to opportunism.

The Basel Manifesto of 1912, unanimously adopted by socialists of all 
countries at a time when such a war as the one that has now broken out 
was precisely foreseen, has quite definitively recognized its imperialist, 
reactionary character and declared that the Congress considers it a crime 
when workers of one nation shoot at workers of another nation; the 
Congress has proclaimed the coming of the proletarian revolution precisely 
in connection with this war. And in fact, this war creates a revolutionary 
situation, generates revolutionary mood and ferment in the masses, and 
everywhere in the best part of the proletariat awakens [evokes] conscious
ness of the harmfulness of opportunism and sharpens the struggle against 
it. The demand for peace, which is growing among the working masses, 
expresses the disillusionment of the masses, the collapse of the bourgeois 
lie about the defense of the fatherland, the beginning of clarification of 
the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. By socialists utilizing this 
mood for revolutionary agitation, by taking no account of possible** de
feat of "one's own" fatherland, they will not deceive the peoples with 
the hope of the possibility of a speedy, somehow durable, democratic 
peace excluding the oppression of nations and disarmament without the 
revolutionary overthrow of the present governments. Only the social revo
lution of the proletariat opens the road to peace and to the freedom of 
nations.

The imperialist war opens the era of social revolution. All objective 
conditions of the modern epoch place on the historical agenda the revo
lutionary mass struggle of the proletariat. The task of socialists is, 
without renouncing a single legal means of struggle, to subordinate all 
such means to

* Here, apparently, a misprint; should read: "Sozialchauvinismus." Ed.
** Here the page ends, and Lenin has written: "See reverse side / Rück
seite." Ed.